The elite Background of Faisal Shazhad the alleged terrorist involved in the attempted bombing at Times Square . What follows are comments by my friend Dr. Omar Ali and a friend of his. I share some of Omar's dark mood at this moment. The articles that follow are what has appeared in a variety of newspapers on Shahzad today.
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: omar ali
Sent: May 5, 2010 6:29 AM
To: asiapeace
Cc: Pakistan_Futures@yahoogroups.com,
Subject: Asiapeace (ACHA) Fw: Re.:View: Let us seize this opportunity & Profile: Faisal Shah
The issue actually goes much deeper than that. Islamic supremacism is not that different from Christian evangelism, Hindu revivalism or those Japanese rightwingers who go around in loudspeaker vans appealing to the emperor to restore Japanese honor and for everyone else to prepare to commit hara kiri. The real difference is at the top of the heap. The people running India, Japan and the USA are cynical, manipulative, greedy, whatever (after all, the CIA financed Islamic revivalism for decades), but they seem to have a vague grip on reality (and what human can hope for more than that?). Their worldview accomodates science and change. The same is true even of the Iranian Mullahs and the Saudi Royal family. But in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the lunatics took over the asylum. Maybe it was the reverse selection procedures of the Pak army (selecting the dumbest people to become generals), maybe it was a result of the original millenarian fever that erupted at partition (look up millenarian on wikipedia btw and you will not find partition listed there as an example, just goes to show that even our advanced culture has its blind spots), maybe it was just one of those things that happen in history, but for the last 30 years, THE STATE in Pakistan has been an active participant in this lunacy and the ideology has taken hold. Sons of air marshals are dreaming of setting off bombs in public places. That just takes the biscuit. I dont know what to say. On a purely western and academic left wing blog, where no contrary opinion can sneak in, I would actually blame the CIA and orientalism and colonialism (not necessarily in that order) and go to sleep a happy man, but even in that echo chamber things are starting to fall apart. Where will this go next, Allah alone knows for sure, we can only hazard a guess. My guess: When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. So I expect the state deparment to pass out more money to GHQ, I expect the CIA to fund some new insane lunatic fringe to counter their last lunatic fringe, I expect the pentagon to ask for more money for weapons and a good hard "shock and awe campaign", I expect professors in san francisco to blame colonialism, and I expect Islamists to blow themselves up with even greater devotion. In short, more of the same. Not really. I am just not in a good mood. Send me your comments. I will try more serious predictions next time. Omar --- On Wed, 5/5/10, Kirfani wrote:
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Faisal Shahzad's father vacates
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Javed Aziz Khan & Mushtaq Paracha
The News,
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=237595
PESHAWAR/NOWSHERA: Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq, father of Faisal Shahzad, the accused in
Eyewitnesses said he packed some belongings in a vehicle and left the house located in Phase IV of the posh Hayatabad town along with male and female members of the family. Their destination wasn't known.
Earlier, members of the media, in particularly TV crews had converged on the house in a bid to talk to family members and learn more about Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested Tuesday in the
Air Vice Marshal Baharul Haq retired from the
A reporter of The News and Geo TV also paid a visit to the family's village, Mohib Banda, near Pabbi in Nowshera district and met some relatives of Faisal Shahzad. They were largely unaware of the happenings in the
Enquiries revealed that Faisal Shahzad is married with two children. His Pakistani identity card was made in
Sareerul Haq, a cousin of Faisal Shahzad and nephew of Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq, said he could not believe the allegations against his cousin. He pointed out that Faisal Shahzad had gone to the
Sareerul Haq is living in the village house owned by Faisal Shahzad's family. He said the house hasn't been mortgaged as stated by interior minister Rahman Malik. Jabir Khan, another cousin of Faisal Shahzad, insisted that Faisal was innocent. He said it was a conspiracy against his cousin to charge him for committing act of terror. Nazeer, another villager from Mohib Banda, said he was a childhood friend of Faisal Shahzad. "I don't think Faisal had links with any militant group," he stressed.
Pakistanis want to know what turned a bright, well-educated middle-class man with a
Declan Walsh in
The Guardian
Wednesday 5 May 2010
A wizened, scraggly bearded man with a lazy eye peered through an ajar door at the Batkha mosque in
What about Muhammad Rehan, Shahzad's friend who had been picked up by Pakistani intelligence as he left morning prayers at the mosque the day before? "I saw nothing of the sort," he insisted. Across the street, traders selling vegetables and scrawny chickens were similarly unhelpful. "No, didn't see a thing," said one, whisking away the flies.
The curious silence at the mosque, which has links to sectarian extremist groups, may have been explained by the intelligence men who loitered on the street, monitoring all comings and going.
In
A senior police officer in Nazimabad, a bustling middle-class neighbourhood where the Batkha mosque is located, said he had no information about those arrested. "It's entirely an intelligence job," he said. "We are told nothing."
The cloud of secrecy is being orchestrated by American and Pakistani investigators trying to collect as much information as they can about Faisal Shahzad. But it makes it harder to answer the central mystery of the affair: why would a well-heeled and highly educated young Pakistani from a privileged background, who had just gained an American passport, want to throw it all away on an ill-conceived and ruthless escapade?
Part of the answer may be found in
Aged 19, Shahzad left the city in 1998 for the
Photos of his wife, Huma Mian, suggest a bright, sophisticated young woman who wore tight jeans, spoke French as well as Urdu, and watched Friends on television. She shared the humdrum concerns of any other young mother; her Facebook profile lists her "activities" as: "Changing Diapers, Feeding Milk, Wiping Drools, Being Sleep Deprived."
Then something changed. A few months after becoming a US citizen, Shahzad left his job, defaulted on his mortgage repayments, and, last June, travelled to Pakistan as part of a five-month journey outside the US when he appears to have transformed into a would-be jihadi killer.
Details of the
By then Shahzad's parents, who hail from a village near
A Pakistani official said he went to North Waziristan, the militant stronghold where Hakimullah Mehsud, the Tehrik-e-Taliban leader who surfaced this week after surviving a
The details are murky. It remains unclear who Shahzad met, who provided training and whether it was co-ordinated by Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack.
Shahzad has reportedly claimed to be a "lone wolf", working alone;
But the question that troubles many Pakistanis is what motivated Shahzad, a professional middle-class Pakistani with a seemingly bright future – to make the journey into the tribal belt in the first place.
"The answer is not easy," said Sharfuddin Memon, former chief of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee in
May 4, 2010
From Suburban Father to a Terrorism Suspect
By JAMES BARRON and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
New York Times
They took their places in the wood-paneled courtroom, 58 people from 32 countries. They listened as a federal magistrate banged the gavel and said it was "a wonderful day for the
The magistrate talked about Thomas Jefferson and told the group that they could run for office — only the presidency and the vice presidency were off limits, according to a tape recording of the proceedings in a Bridgeport, Conn., courtroom last year, on April 17. On her instructions, they raised their right hands and repeated the oath of citizenship.
One man in the group was the Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad, whose father or grandfather was a Pakistani military official and who, at 29, had spent a decade in the
He had obtained citizenship through marriage to a woman who was born in
On Saturday, the authorities said, Mr. Shahzad drove a Nissan Pathfinder packed with explosives and detonators, leaving it in
About 7 p.m., as a robot from the bomb squad was being summoned to the S.U.V., Mr. Shahzad called his landlord from the train to
The landlord met him at the apartment that night to let him in. "He looked nervous," said the landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak, who had rented him a two-bedroom apartment in
In nearly a dozen years in this country, Mr. Shahzad had gone to school, held steady jobs, bought and sold real estate, and kept his immigration status in good order, giving no sign to those he interacted with that he had connections to terrorists in
His neighbors in
"I didn't take it for much," said the broker, Igor Djuric, "because around that time not many people did."
George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in
Mr. Shahzad was born in
Pakistani officials said Mr. Shahzad was either a son or a grandson of Baharul Haq, who retired as a vice air marshal in 1992 and then joined the Civil Aviation Authority.
A Pakistani official said Mr. Shahzad might have had affiliations with Ilyas Kashmiri, a militant linked to Al Qaeda who was formerly associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba, an anti-India militant group once nurtured by the Pakistani state. But friends said the family was well respected and nonpolitical.
"Neither Faisal nor his family has ever had any links with any jihadist or religious organization," one friend said. Another, a lawyer, said that "the family is in a state of shock," adding, "They believe that their son has been implicated in a fake case."
Mr. Shahzad apparently went back and forth to
Mr. Shahzad's generation grew up in a
"It's not that they don't speak English or aren't skilled," a Pakistani official explained. "But in their hearts and in their minds they reject the West. They can't see a world where they live together; there's only one way, one right way."
According to immigration officials, Mr. Shahzad arrived in the
He had previously attended a program in Karachi affiliated with the now-defunct Southeastern University in Washington; a transcript from the spring of 1998, found in the garbage outside the Shelton house, showed that he got D's in English composition and microeconomics, B's in Introduction to Accounting and Introduction to Humanities, and a C in statistics.
He enrolled at the
"If this hadn't happened I would have long forgotten him," said William Greenspan, Mr. Shahzad's adviser as an undergraduate. "There are a lot of students you get to know; they call you up once in awhile to say hello, they got a nice job. After he left U.B., I never heard anything from him."
In January 2002 Mr. Shahzad obtained an H1B visa, a coveted status meant for highly skilled workers and good for three years, with a possible extension. Records show that Elizabeth Arden, the cosmetics giant, applied for a visa for Mr. Shahzad; he worked there as a temporary clerk in the accounting department in 2001, through an employment agency called Accountants Inc., according to a timecard found in his trash.
Officials at the cosmetic company confirmed that they hired Mr. Shahzad to work in the accounting department at the
After his marriage, to Huma Mian, he petitioned the immigration agency in 2004 to change his status; he wanted to become a permanent resident, another step on the path to citizenship.
Ms. Mian had just graduated from the
Her parents lived in the
"He seemed educated," Mr. Wright said. "Didn't make a lot of conversation."
The Mians moved out in 2008, leaving a post office box overseas as a forwarding address. Meanwhile, Mr. Shahzad applied for citizenship that October.
Shortly after his naturalization ceremony in the
He and his wife had bought a newly built single-family house on
They tried to cash in on the real estate boom, listing it for sale for $329,000 in 2006. It did not sell, said Frank DelVecchio, an agent who picked up the listing in 2008. The price then was $299,000. Later it was marked down to $285,000, and finally, $284,500.
In
"He wasn't unfriendly," said Debbie Bussolari, a 55-year-old dental technician who lives across the street. "He seemed a little different."
The family had several tag sales last summer, offering knickknacks and kid stuff, "things that you would give to Goodwill," said Mary Ann Galich, 55, who lives behind the house.
"She was outside dealing with the people, and he was dealing with the money," Ms. Galich recalled.
Davon Reid, 17, who lives next door, said the family moved in December: "It seemed like they picked up everything very quickly." A few months later, a real estate broker let him in to check the place out, and it was a wreck.
"There was spoiled food and milk everywhere," he said. "They just left everything. They left clothes in closets, the kids' shoes, the woman's shoes. And the kids' toys."
Three months ago, Mr. Shahzad signed a one-year lease on the two-bedroom apartment in
Other details took on significance in light of the arrest. When Mr. Chomiak went looking for Mr. Shahzad on Monday, he noticed a distributor cap and two small bags of fertilizer in the garage.
Mr. Shahzad, Mr. Chomiak said, mentioned that he wanted to grow tomatoes.
Reporting was contributed by Nina Bernstein and Alison Leigh Cowan from
Correction: May 5, 2010
An earlier version of this article contained an incorrect attribution for the date of Mr. Shahzad's arrival in the
May 4, 2010
A Suspect Leaves Clues at Every Turn
By JIM DWYER
New York Times
Here is a quest for the invisible life, rendered in less than 50 words.
Buy a used Nissan Pathfinder with cash; decline a bill of sale or any other paperwork; communicate about the deal on a prepaid cellphone, registered to no one. Then strip the vehicle identification number, or VIN, from the dashboard. Add a stolen license plate. Tint the windows.
And here, it seems, is the very definition of futility.
These were the tactics that prosecutors say were used by Faisal Shahzad, the man pulled off a plane late Monday night and charged with trying to blow up the Pathfinder in Times Square on Saturday evening, when tens of thousands of people were jammed into the streets.
It was the precise map of the fanatic heart drawn by Yeats: Great hatred, little room.
At virtually every turn, the evasive steps Mr. Shahzad took left digital footprints, a trail that ultimately led to his seat on an Emirates flight that was bound for
If Mr. Shahzad is indeed responsible, he would not be the first car-bombing suspect arrested in a matter of days because of the things he left behind. With every breath of modern life, people leave a vast series of markings that are unseen and, usually, unnoticed.
Nearly two decades ago, the first — and so far, only successful — car bomb in the modern history of
Climbing through the rubble a few days later, Joe Hanlin, a federal explosives investigator, and Donald Sadowy, a detective with the Police Department's bomb squad, found bits and pieces of a vehicle that had been torn apart, including a severely twisted section of the frame. That section appeared to have been quite close to the explosion. As they began to swab it for chemical residue, a series of raised dots emerged. They formed letters and numbers.
"We couldn't read all the numbers," Mr. Hanlin testified later that year, "but we knew they were numbers and could be used to trace the vehicle."
It turned out that particular fragment had been stamped with the vehicle's 17-digit VIN, the automotive equivalent of DNA. Each vehicle is assigned a unique series of numbers that shows where it was manufactured and when, and describes in code its body type, make, model, options.
The VIN showed that the demolished vehicle had been a Ford Econoline van, owned by the Ryder Truck and Rental Company, which reported that it had been rented a few weeks earlier in
In fact, by the time the van was linked to the bombing, Mr. Salameh had already reported it stolen. While others who were part of the bomb plot had fled the country, Mr. Salameh was left behind, nearly penniless. As federal investigators descended on the rental company, Mr. Salameh was haggling with Ryder for the return of a $400 deposit.
ON Saturday, when police seized the Nissan Pathfinder left in
The man who bought it had declined the offer of a bill of sale. He had, however, called the seller several times from the prepaid cellphone to arrange the purchase, according to a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday.
That same phone had been used for calls to and from a "Pakistani telephone number associated with Shahzad," the complaint said.
With Mr. Shahzad's name, investigators searched his home in
Later that night, in a seat on board Emirates Flight 202, they found Faisal Shahzad.
Another invisible man, thwarted by a VIN.
May 4, 2010
Lapses Allowed Suspect to Board Plane
By SCOTT SHANE
New York Times
WASHINGTON — Why was Faisal Shahzad permitted to board a flight for Dubai some 24 hours after investigators of the Times Square terrorism case learned he might be connected to the attempted bombing?
Though Mr. Shahzad was stopped before he could fly away, there were at least two significant lapses in the security response of the government and the airline that allowed him to come close to making his escape, officials of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies said on Tuesday.
First, an F.B.I. surveillance team that had found Mr. Shahzad in
In addition, the airline he was flying, Emirates, failed to act on an electronic message at midday on Monday notifying all carriers to check the no-fly list for an important added name, the officials said. That meant lost opportunities to flag him when he made a reservation and paid for his ticket in cash several hours before departure.
Top Obama administration officials and some members of Congress on Tuesday praised the government's handling of the investigation, noting that Mr. Shahzad was identified, tracked and arrested before he could escape.
But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, while saying he was reluctant to criticize those in charge of airport security, added: "Clearly the guy was on the plane and shouldn't have been. We got lucky."
Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, said she applauded the work of law enforcement officials in quickly solving the case. Still, she added, "A key question for me is why this suspect was allowed to board the plane in the first place. There appears to be a troubling gap between the time they had his name and the time he got on the plane."
At a news conference in
"I was here all yesterday and through much of last night, and was aware of the tracking that was going on," Mr. Holder said. "And I was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him."
Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, called the capture of the accused terrorist "a great team effort." She added: "The law enforcement work in this case was truly exemplary."
While the officials emphasized the successful outcome to the chase, a more detailed account, in interviews with officials who spoke of the continuing investigation mostly on condition of anonymity, gave a mixed picture.
On Sunday night, about 24 hours after the smoking Nissan Pathfinder was left on a bustling
But at that point, officials said, they were uncertain of Mr. Shahzad's role and did not think they had enough evidence to arrest him and charge him with a crime. Instead, they began an urgent manhunt; F.B.I. agents located Mr. Shahzad in
It remained uncertain Tuesday night at what time Mr. Shahzad had been found and when he was lost. Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, declined to comment on the surveillance issue.
But at about 12:30 p.m. on Monday, more certain that Mr. Shahzad was the suspected terrorist, investigators asked the Department of Homeland Security to put him on the no-fly list. Three minutes later, the department sent airlines, including Emirates, an electronic notification that they should check the no-fly list for an update. At about 4:30 p.m., more information was added to the list, including Mr. Shahzad's passport number, officials said.
Workers at Emirates evidently did not check the list, because at 6:30 p.m., Mr. Shahzad called the airline and booked a flight to
Airlines are not required to report cash purchases, a Homeland Security official said. Emirates actually did report Mr. Shahzad's purchase to the Transportation Security Administration — but only hours later, when he was already in custody, the official said.
Mr. Shahzad had evaded the surveillance effort and bought his ticket seven hours after his name went on the no-fly list. But the system gives security officials one more chance to stop a dangerous passenger.
As is routine, when boarding was completed for the flight, Emirates Flight EK202, the final passenger manifest was sent to the
They sounded the alarm, and minutes later, with the jet still at the gate, its door was opened and agents came aboard and took Mr. Shahzad into custody, officials said. The airliner then pulled away from the gate but was called back.
"Actually I have a message for you to go back to the gate immediately," an air traffic controller told the pilot, according to a recording posted to the Web by LiveATC.net, which tracks air communications. "I don't know exactly why, but you can call your company for the reason," the controller added.
After the plane was called back, the authorities removed two more passengers. They were questioned and cleared. They and all the rest of the passengers were rescreened, as was the baggage, and the flight took off about seven hours late.
An Emirates spokeswoman, who said she was not allowed to speak on the record, declined to comment on the claims by government officials that the airline had neglected to recheck the no-fly list. "Emirates takes every necessary precaution to ensure the safety and well-being of its passengers and crew and regrets the inconvenience caused," the airline said in a statement.
One long-planned change in security procedures may reduce the chances of a repeat failure to check an updated no-fly list, officials said. The Transportation Security Administration is taking over the job of checking passenger manifests against the no-fly list under its Secure Flight program.
Such checks are currently being done by the T.S.A. for domestic flights, and the agency is scheduled to be checking all international flights by the end of the year, agency officials said.
May 4, 2010
Smoking Car to an Arrest in 53 Hours
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and AL BAKER
New York Times
The keys found in the ignition of the sport utility vehicle that was left to explode in
The young woman in Bridgeport who last month sold Mr. Shahzad the rusting 1993 Nissan Pathfinder prosecutors say he used in the failed attack did not remember his name. But she had his telephone number.
That number was traced back to a prepaid cellular phone purchased by Mr. Shahzad, one that received four calls from
It was 53 hours and 20 minutes from the moment the authorities say Mr. Shahzad, undetected, left his failed car bomb in the heart of Manhattan until the moment he was taken off a plane at Kennedy Airport and charged with trying to kill untold numbers of the city's residents and tourists.
"In the real world," said the
In the most basic calculus, the success of the investigation of the attempted car bombing in Times Square is measured by the authorities only one way: a suspect was caught and charged, and now faces life in prison if convicted.
But based on interviews and court records, those 53 hours included good breaks, dead ends, real scares, plain detective work and high-tech sophistication. There were moments of keen insight, and perhaps fearsome oversight.
The police detectives and federal agents of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, for instance, interviewed the occupants of 242 rooms of the Marriott Marquis and 92 staff workers. They spoke to theatergoers from the stages of two Broadway plays to determine if anyone had glimpsed a man fleeing the Pathfinder shortly after 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.
They did a 24-hour street canvass and fanned out to
But according to several people with knowledge of the investigation, federal agents who had Mr. Shahzad under surveillance lost him at one point, a development that probably allowed him to make it to the airport and briefly board the plane bound for the Middle East.
Spokesmen for the F.B.I. in
If the lapse occurred, it was not final, or fatal. Mr. Shahzad, according to court papers, confessed to trying to set off a bomb in
The route to that capture began in Midtown Manhattan, just off Broadway on a warm night of high drama.
At 6:28 p.m. on Saturday, the authorities say Mr. Shahzad steered his newly acquired Pathfinder west on
He bailed out seconds later. Then a street vendor — wearing an "I love New York T-shirt" — waved down a mounted officer, who saw the white smoke collecting inside the still idling vehicle and made a call that got the bomb squad there by about 7 p.m.
It took the bomb squad, according to court papers, eight hours of work simply to render the S.U.V. safe enough to approach. Once the authorities did, they found keys hanging from the ignition. Hours later, after they towed the car to a
"The break in this case took place when a
It had been something of a feat to get the city's most senior officials to the scene of the attempted bombing.
Mr. Kelly had been in
Fifteen minutes later, the two men, still in fancy suits, were inside a drab storage area of a building on
And soon, investigators fanned out to find the driver.
All Sunday afternoon, the agents and police searched for the Pathfinder's owner of record — a man they knew had bought it used from a lot in
"I give it to her," the man, Lagnes Colas, said in an interview, noting that she had decided to sell it recently so she could get a better car.
Within 20 minutes, the investigators were talking with his daughter, Peggy.
She said she met on April 24 with a man who answered her online advertisements. He bargained the price down to $1,300 from $1,800, she told investigators. He paid with $100 bills. He looked Middle Eastern or Hispanic. And it was, investigators learned, a strange transaction: one conducted in a supermarket parking lot, without paperwork or receipts, and involving a man who explained that a bill of sale was unnecessary and who seemed uninterested in the vehicle's long-term prospects.
Mr. Shahzad, according to court papers, "inspected the interior seating and cargo area" but not the engine. He was told the chassis was not in good shape, but he bought it anyway.
"I thought maybe he might bring the car back," Mr. Colas said in an interview.
The investigative trail was warming up.
Later Sunday, a sketch artist was brought in from the Connecticut State Police to work with Ms. Colas on a portrait of the man who had bought the S.U.V. The work was promising.
On Monday, police and federal agents were back. Now, they had photographs of six men. She picked out the one of Mr. Shahzad, the court papers said.
Meanwhile, officials dug through Verizon Wireless records to learn more about the number she provided, one they found was attached to a prepaid phone activated April 16.
Though they declined to say precisely how they tracked such an anonymous number, they established not only that Mr. Shahzad was the buyer of the Pathfinder, but also that he got four phone calls from a Pakistani number associated with him in the hour before he made his final calls to arrange the purchase of the vehicle, according to the papers.
But there was more. The records had logged a call made by Mr. Shahzad's disposable cellphone on April 25, the day after he bought the Pathfinder. It was to a rural
Such fireworks were a part of the bomb in the Pathfinder: the would-be detonator.
On Monday, F.B.I. agents spoke to Mr. Shahzad's landlord in
"He said he'd recently come from his country," Mr. Chomiak said.
Soon after interviewing the landlord on Monday, investigators first "got eyes on" Mr. Shahzad, according to law enforcement officials. He was in another car, one registered in his name, returning to his apartment from the grocery store.
Exactly how long investigators had him under surveillance is unclear. But officials said investigators watched him come home and go inside his house. He emerged later to get back in his car, headed south.
It seems clear, according to interviews with a variety of officials, the investigators must have lost track of Mr. Shahzad at some point. He made it all the way down the jetway and into his seat.
Before the plane pulled away from the gate, though, investigators had caught up with him. He was taken out of his seat and into custody.
The 53 hours of work and uncertainty were over.
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